Vista - 2 Os's

Hey. I have 4 HDD's 2 SATA and 2 IDE.

1: Primary which is running Vista Ultimate x64 - 500gb
2: Holds important work info
3: Blank (IDE)
4: Back up (IDE)

I'm thinking about installing Win XP SP 2 on the 3rd drive. I know how to install an OS, but what would I have to boot that drive as primary? Mess around with the jumpers everytime? Or would there be an option to boot that harddrive first? I'm not an expert at this stuff. HELP!

hi rewindurmind, welcome to the vista forums

dual booting vista and XP is not a major problem , but is easier if xp is installed first

have a look at this step by step

How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

also for controlling the vista boot loader after install have a look at this

Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

Hope this helps

So I assume XP will be installed on the same drive as Vista? Will I have to format or will I lose anything on the drive.

Thanks.

Hi,

no need to have Vista and XP on the same drive, in fact would always suggest they are on different drives if at all possible.

What you could do in fact is disconnect your main drive and install XP on another drive so that XP does not know about Vista, then when you have XP running reconnect and boot vista and use EasyBCD to set-up your dual boot.

if you do this two drive setup you should have some form of boot drive selection option within your BIOS, on my AMI BIOS I can press F10 to choose which disk I boot from, this will if you ever need it allow you to boot xp without the vista boot loader.